House panel hears about adding LGBT to census survey

NEWS

by Michael K. Lavers

The head of the U.S. Census Bureau testified before a House
subcommittee in Washington, D.C., on March 6 about ongoing efforts to
streamline the agency and to ensure the data it collects accurately reflects
the country's population.

Robert M. Groves, Ph.D., director of the census bureau,
specifically spoke about the American Community Survey. First used as a
successor to the census long form in 2005, the survey asks respondents a series
of questions about their age, sex, race, family and relationships,
socio-economic and education status, disability, housing and other factors.
Groves noted that between 97 percent and 98 percent of the 3.5 million
households that receive the American Community Survey each year take part in
it.

"The ACS provides relevant and unbiased data products,
available to everyone," said Groves. "It is how the American people
and our elected officials can best measure how our nation and their community
is progressing on a year-by-year basis. The ACS data products give businesses
the statistical information they need to create jobs, plan for the future,
establish new businesses and improve our economy."

The survey currently does not include any questions that
specifically ask about sexual orientation or gender identity and expression,
but activists continue to lobby the census bureau, the White House, and other
government agencies to conduct LGBT-specific data collection.

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services announced
last June that it plans to add a question on sexual orientation to the National
Health Interview Survey by 2013. The agency also plans to begin collecting data
based on gender identity and expression, but it has yet to provide a specific
timeline.

"Having a sexual orientation question would provide
substantial new opportunities at understanding potential health disparities
around sexual orientation," said Gary Gates, Ph.D., of the Williams
Institute at the UCLA School of Law.

The Williams Institute last year released a series of
reports that documented the number of gay and lesbian couples who live in a
particular state. The census bureau currently includes same-sex couples within "husband/wife"
and "unmarried partner" households, but the agency has conceded the
questions that it uses to collect this data are problematic. Gates is hopeful
that the addition of sexual orientation to the National Health Interview Survey
could provide the agency with an effective blueprint upon which it can develop an
LGBT-inclusive questionnaire.

"It would be really useful to have a larger national
survey that we could assess the accuracy of these data," said Gates,
referring back to an inclusive National Health Interview Survey and its
potential impact on the American Community Survey and other census bureau
forms. "That would help in that effort with the larger demographic
surveys."

The National Gay and Lesbian Task Force has also been active
in the effort to implement a more LGBT-inclusive census.

The organization and other LGBT groups launched their
"Queer the Census" initiative in 2010 after the census bureau
announced it would count same-sex married couples as married.

"We wanted to make sure the LGBT community knew about
this change and that they should participate in the census," said Brad
Jacklin, project director at the Task Force.

Another component of the initiative that re-launched last
October is to highlight the need to collect LGBT-specific data.

The federal government allocates $450 billion each year based
on health, educational and employment disparities in data that it collects from
the American Community Survey and other research. Roughly 42,000 people have
signed onto a pledge that calls upon the White House and members of Congress to
support the collection of LGBT-specific collection data in the census and other
surveys.

"From a macro level, the LGBT community is missing out
on services that are targeted for other populations because we are not counted
on those surveys," said Jacklin. "We anecdotally know that the LGBT
community suffers a number of health disparities, a number of employment
discrimination disparities. Getting better data collection on the community, to
be able to point out to the policy makers that ... there's an actual need here
– LGBT people aren't going to their doctors because they're afraid of
discrimination, which leads to poor health outcomes. Having that form of
information gives us a little more force when weĠre talking to the agencies or
members of Congress."

Both Jacklin and Gates said they expect that the census bureau
will not consider the addition of questions related to sexual orientation and
gender identity until 2017 – three years before it conducts the next
census.

"My hope is that by getting the question on the
National Health Interview Survey will ... help in efforts to then encourage
them to add those kinds of questions to their more kind of routine demographic
surveys like the American Community Survey," stressed Gates.